


Stripped Wire

by fakemountains



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M, Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Therapy, Trauma, a crush is discussed but not fully explored, rape is only mentioned, sex is mentioned frequently but nothing explicit, this is all really personal why am i sharing this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:53:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23224336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fakemountains/pseuds/fakemountains
Summary: You really didn't want to be here.You should never have confided in Britta. You took her as a sponge, one that would soak up your venting and let it rest, but no. She was proactive, eager to help a friend, even if it meant humiliating you to no end.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	Stripped Wire

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this when I was going through it. It's dumb and the ending is lame, but it was super cathartic and maybe someone can relate to it? Sorry, it's not fun and sexy like my other stuff (is my other stuff even that?) but it's something I guess. This is all super personal so be careful with it. Sexual assault is mentioned but not heavily explored. Lot's of talk about trauma, though.

The room was a clash of colors-papers spread over his desk haphazardly, his outfit a range of patterns. You stare at the floor, speckled linoleum, trying to get lost in patterns and words spelled out in the dots. 

You really didn’t want to be here.

You had no issue with Duncan. He’d been apathetic towards you at best, attention always shifted towards Britta, with her tousled curl, heeled boot “confidence”. You had no real issue, you just didn’t think he could help you, didn’t trust him to really try. He was a notorious alcoholic, he was friends with Jeff, and Britta herself had said he had spent their sessions with occasional flirtations, not that you thought he’d ever spare those your way.

You didn’t trust him, but you found him cute in his own way. He was transparent as all hell, his narcissism the sheerest of masks, and his low self esteem was endearing, in a way. You’d always had a thing for nerds, and a long legged one such as him had you weak.

But the little crush- that only seemed to intensify as those brown eyes looked over their glasses at you-only made this harder.

You should never have confided in Britta. You took her as a sponge, one that would soak up your venting and let it rest, but no. She was proactive, eager to help a friend, even if it meant humiliating you to no end. You’d told her no therapist, or psychiatrist, had really been able to help, so she took that as you needing someone a little unconventional. So why not the resident psychologist who might be a little unqualified? He’d helped her once- just the once- after all. 

So one day you come into the library, and she drags you right back out, telling you she spoke to Duncan about your little problem, and you swore you could hear the blood rushing to your head. 

Sometimes you hated her so much it made you sick.

Now here you sat, biting your lip, pinching the webbing between your thumb and index finger to the point of pain. Your chest hurt.

“So,” he spoke up, after spending a bit swinging back and forth in his chair, like he was weighing his words, and the alcohol slowed the process down a bit.

“You can’t have sex.”

God.

“I guess? It’s not like I can't, it's just... hard.”

He’s got a clipboard in his hands now, and you’d really rather be doing anything other than letting Ian Duncan psychoanalyze you. Anything.

“Does it hurt?”

Jesus H. This would’ve been so much easier if the so called sex therapist you’d seen before had asked this. You’d expected her to ask this. Sometimes it hurts if you’re too tense, but she acted shy, called it ‘being intimate,’ and though you’d wanted someone who wasn’t a damn prude and would just listen to you, it being the man with a voice so deep you could get lost in it made this so damn hard.

And let’s not even touch what him talking to you about pain did to you.

“Sometimes, when it’s bad.”

“When what’s bad?”

You're lost in the swirls of the fabric on the pillow you have pinned to your chest. It’s a barrier and you both know it. 

“I don’t know. Everything? Sometimes I’m touched a certain way and I have flashbacks and it ruins the whole thing. I get scared.”

Now he looks concerned, and now we’re back to the core of everything. Vulnerability.

“Flashbacks? “

“Yeah, I was,” you swallow. You want this to seem easy to say, like it doesn’t bother you anymore, but it’s so obvious it does, and you’ve never seen Duncan look so soft before, “I was raped. As a kid.”

“I see. I’m sorry,” he sounds so sincere you want to run.

“Please don’t apologize. I’m so sick of apologies, I just,” you sigh, clutching the pillow tighter, “I just want help.”

You see him stand, and you move further back into the couch, as if trying to get away from him. But he moves to sit on the couch across from you, and despite yourself you feel the urge to open up a bit.

“Everyone just wants to tell me it’s not my fault. And I-I still have issues accepting that, but my main issue is how it effects my sex life. That’s all I want to talk about, and no one wants to listen. All they say is ‘I’m sorry.’”

He sits with his legs crossed, writing diligently on what looks to be a scrap piece of paper,and you suddenly feel bad, feel shameful.

“I’m sorry, I should go.”

But you don’t move to leave, just wait for his response.

“You feel ignored, right?”

It’s such a simple thing but you feel naked, as if your skin is exposed to fire and you recoil a little.

“Yeah.”

He doesn’t look to you when he speaks up, but he seems so attentive, like a different person when he tells you, “I’m listening.”

So, you speak. About how it’s so hard to relax around anyone, about how you’re ruined forever. You wonder how anyone could want you, this ugly broken thing, with all this baggage that’s seemed to cripple you forever. You’re sick in all these various ways, physically and emotionally and mentally. Sometimes when you have sex you feel like you’re somewhere else, like you can’t feel a thing, and sometimes it’s too intense. And you always feel like you need too much to feel anything at all. 

He seems unaffected by it all, even when you let it slip that you need to hurt for it to feel good, and that that doesn’t really bother you, but maybe that just means you’re even more fucked in the head. You tell him about your last relationship, about how you felt everything hinged on sex, even though your boyfriend never made you feel that way. You tell him you think it stems from your parents having both been cheated on in the past, and how they were suspicious whenever the other didn’t want to do anything, and they’d have screaming matches about it that kept you up all night.

You told him about your biological father leaving, and how even though you tried to act like it was no big deal, nothing ever seemed to fill the hole that he left, even though your stepfather tried. 

You went into detail about your assault, how it was all vivid until a certain point, and that’s when you think he went beyond just groping. You told him you wish your dad was there to save you, and felt that knot in your throat that comes before the sobs. So, you paused.

“I can see why you don’t trust men,” he said, almost trying to lighten the mood, and you let a puff of air out of your nose as if to agree.

“I really wish I could.”

He looks up at you then, trying to be personable, looking so serious it almost makes you cry again.

“Do you trust me?”

You just look down.

“I’m sorry, please don’t take it personally.”

“Kind of hard not to, love,” oh, that broke your heart, even though you felt it inappropriate for him to express himself like this in this setting.

You both sit in silence for a while, and the longer you do, the more ashamed you feel, like you’ve taken advantage of him, just dumped everything out on the table and demand he fix it. Now.

“I’m sorry, that was a lot-“

“Stop apologizing. That’s what you’re supposed to do here. You talk, and I’m supposed to listen.”

His voice was firm, but it did nothing to assuage your guilt.

“Does me talking even do anything. Is there anything you’ve learned from this you couldn’t have figured out from me just saying I have trouble having sex? I can’t open up. I can’t be vulnerable because men have hurt me, and I’m hideous and all I deserve is men hurting me.”

“You’re not hideous-“

“Inside, I’m hideous inside. I’m an awful, mean person, if I had a soul, if souls were real, it would be an amorphous blob. It’d be a black hole. It’d be awful.”

He sighs, and you feel crushed.

Then, he reaches his hand out to you, looking at you pointedly until you rest your hand in his. He gives it a squeeze, a gesture so tender you begin to cry, and he lets you, running his thumb over your knuckles gently.

“You deserve to be loved,” and you sob, because who would have thought in a million years this man, that Ian Duncan, would’ve listened to you dredge up the sludge from the bottom of your very being, looked at it, and told you you deserve anything but loneliness?


End file.
